If you love traveling, hiking, or just need a refreshing and new experience, traveling to the North West is a great location that sometimes doesn’t get enough credit. Compared to the city life, the breathtaking views of the mountain ranges of the National Parks such as Yellowstone or Glacier, give you a refreshing new scenery to take in. There are thousands of miles of beautiful landscapes that include forests, rivers, mountains, valleys and last but not least, glaciers.
I’m from Montana and moved to Virginia when I was younger, so the only glaciers I had seen were in pictures that my mom used to show me from seventeen years ago. Yes, the pictures were pretty, but as always, seeing things in person is way more impressive than just seeing a flat 2D image. The reason I mention this is solely for the reason that when I found out I was traveling to Wyoming and Montana over the summer, I was particularly excited to visit the places my parents had shown me pictures of over the years.
LET ME TELL YOU NOW, you have never seen such a beautiful sight. The crisp air, along with all the colors that combine to make the most breathtaking view is all worth it. Part of the many views that are located in the North West include the mountain ranges that contain glaciers. Glaciers are huge bodies of ice that carve into the mountains and due to the planet heating up over the past century, many of them are melting completely.
This process has been happening over the years and continues to be an issue that contributes to the erosion of our planet. Due to several factors for why the Earth is heating up at a rapid rate, the glaciers that were located in National Parks even 20 years ago are being declassified as just huge chunks of ice instead of glaciers due to the amount of shrinkage. The most noticeable example of shrinkage is in Glacier National Park which is located in Montana that had about 150 glaciers back in 1910 and currently only has 26 left. This is obviously a drastic change that proves our planet is going through a huge and unfortunate change.
The glaciers are such beautiful and essential pieces to the environment which makes it even sadder to see them go. They are not just huge chunks of ice, but rather are the sculptors of mountains and valleys which provide us some of the most dramatic and beautiful sites which complete the scenery of the beautiful mountain ranges. They are so pretty and hiking to go see them is completely worth it!
My suggestion is to go see them before they all melt because unlike ice we see when it snows or even an example as simple as ice cubes, once a glacier starts to melt, it is a rapid process of degrading and simply disappearing. If you get the chance to travel there, make sure to have fun and appreciate a wonder of the world that might not be there the next time you go back!